“Frostbite,” he said. “It happened on the boat that picked me up. I was all right in the water—it was warmer than the air.” He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. “I got lucky. It was a fishing boat working with the Norwegian resistance—they had machine guns hidden in oil barrels. They heard my Mayday on their radio and came looking for us. But it took two more days to make landfall in Shetland, and it was bloody cold sitting on the deck.”

“Us?” whispered Mrs. Campbell.

“Give us a drink and I’ll tell you what happened,” Jamie said, rapping the sixpence on the countertop. “I’m parched.”

Ellen:

He told his dreadful tale in a dull voice. We listened without daring to speak, though Nancy sobbed quietly all through the last bit. When he’d finished he wrapped both hands around his heavy ale as if it could warm them, and raised his glass.

“Flying Officer David Silvermont,” he said hoarsely. “Absent friends. Madeira and Pimms. Now we’re official aces.”

He drank slowly, and that’s when I saw his blackened fingers.

“Och, Jamie-lad!” I exclaimed in alarm. “Why aren’t you in hospital?”

“I had to come here. Silver told me to buy myself a drink with his tanner at Nancy’s, and I’m doing it.”

I wanted to shake him. Here he was alive, his two hands ripe with gangrene, and he’d nothing better to do than toss back a pint in the pub?

“You know my own twin brother nearly lost a leg with blood poisoning after Dunkirk last spring!” I said furiously. “If you don’t get those fingers off they will kill you.”

He shrugged. “Can’t feel ’em. Stopped worrying about ’em when they stopped hurting. Can’t feel my toes, either, but I haven’t looked. I can drive. I bet I can fly, too.”

He sighed, and put his head down on his arms on the bar.

“I went home first,” Jamie mumbled, his head sticking out of the wool collar of his leather jacket like a tortoise. “One boat to Orkney and another to the mainland, and then I got a ride with a forestry crew. But I should have come straight here. The moment I got down from the lorry I wanted to be here. So I took the car and drove myself. It’s not far.”

“Did you come in your mother’s car? Does she know you took it? Where did you get the petrol? Is there enough left to get to Aberdeen?”

“Yes, no, don’t know,” he answered wearily. “Probably.”

“Hospital,” I ordered. “Now. I’ll drive.”

Louisa:

We heard the car motor start, stop, start again. Then it roared away down the hill with its tire chains clattering.

Jane bent at the waist, leaned over, and toppled a stack of peat bricks with one hand. She shoved them into the fire with her foot.